We are heading back into the world of The Walking Dead with Dead City. Negan and Maggie are fighting walkers again but this time on the island of Manhattan. The original show became a fan favorite right out of the gate. It would then last 11 seasons and host numerous spin-offs before it would finally come to a close. What are the best episodes of The Walking Dead? Let’s find out.
WARNING!!!!!! There will be spoilers for the entire run of The Walking Dead.
Our survivors finally have their big confrontation with The Whisperers. A giant battle at Hilltop sees the community left in ruins. Judith gets lost (not nearly as much as her brother) and is rescued by Earl. After he is bitten, she has to take matters into her own hands and kill her savior.
We see Negan capture Lydia and leave her tied to a chair. As he brings Alpha to the cabin so she can finally see her daughter after she betrayed her, we see the whole thing was a trap, and Negan beheads her. The shocking reveal is that Negan has been working for Carol this entire time and infiltrating the Whisperers. A great twist that helped Negan push to be a better man. Should be interesting to see how far he’s come in Dead City.
Walkers begin to swarm the prison, forcing survivors to fend for their lives. Different groups get separated and try to find the best hiding spots. Maggie, Lori, and Carl end up in a boiler room, but in the worst timing ever, Lori goes into labor. This complicates matters as Lori must be quiet to avoid drawing walkers to them. Maggie does the best she can and performs a C-Section on Lori. It proves to be too much, and Lori knows she will end up dying from her wounds. This forces Carl to kill his own mother to keep her from reanimating and endangering their lives. A heavy episode. now that Maggie is a mom, it should be interesting to see how she has grown since these early episodes on Dead City.
Season 2 became an issue after AMC spent most of its budget on other shows that season. The Walking Dead budget got slashed, which caused enough friction that showrunner Frank Darabont was fired from the show. Despite the turmoil, they still found a way to bring in some good drama for the season.
Rick learns that Hershel’s barn is filled with walkers in the hopes they can be cured one day. In one of his frequent outbursts, Shane releases the walkers and starts to shoot them all. We finally see that Carol’s daughter Sophia, who had been missing all season, is one of the last walkers to exit the barn. Rick dispatches her, and the group is shook, leading into the midseason break. This death would reverberate for seasons to come. Maggie was introduced this season, and it will be interesting to see how different she is now on Dead City.
This action-packed midseason premiere would help set the stage for what was to come on the show. The survivors battle with the Saviors after they try and stop them on the road. Later Rick tries to teach a small group from Alexandria how to walk with the walkers. One panics, which causes two of the survivors to be eaten. Glenn and Enid go to rescue Maggie but get more than they bargained for. Finally, Rick goes into a rage and single handly kills a large group of walkers so that those from Alexandria will finally understand what it takes to survive in this new world.
Rick, Carl, and Michonne are making their way to Terminus when a group of scavengers jumps them. They tie them up and threaten to rape and kill Carl and Michonne before they kill Rick. Daryl is part of the group as he joined when he got separated from the survivors. He tries to talk the group out of it but is told he’ll be next.
While on his knees with his hands tied, Rick is able to bite the leader’s neck and kill him. They kill the rest of the group and head to Terminus. Things get worse when they are captured at Terminus and find out it is run by cannibals. This season finale ends with Rick stating that they will feel really stupid when they realize who they’re messing with.
This season picks up with Rick and company captured at Terminus. They seem to be at a loss as some of their members are about to be killed off for the residents of Terminus to eat. What no one counted on was that Carol was still lingering in the wilderness outside of the encampment.
This episode cemented her as one of the most badass characters on the show as she blows up part of the perimeter, which lets walkers into the compound. She makes her way in, hidden among them, and takes out some of the cannibals. Carol frees the group, and they are able to escape unharmed. A great episode that highlights Carol as one of the best characters on the show.
Truly one of the more shocking episodes as we see Alpha disguise herself and sneak into The Kingdom. She seems to be going around and enjoying what the community has to offer. As viewers, we hope that maybe she is finally learning that her way isn’t the only way to survive. Instead, we see that she has a plan to capture some of the residents from the different communities. She tells Daryl of her plan to split the surrounding land and that no one from any of the communities should cross the border into their territory.
They are released, and soon the group stumbles upon the marked border and sees the reanimated heads of some of their friends on spikes. Alpha had actually been selecting targets for this declaration during her visit. The show kills off numerous major characters, including Carol’s adopted son Henry. This would motivate Carol’s actions for the rest of the series.
After the Governor attacked the prison, survivors ended up being separated as they fled. Carol, Tyreese, Lizzie, Mika, and baby Judith end up taking refuge in an abandoned house in the woods. They stay put while they try to figure out how to reconnect with the rest of the group. Twelve-year-old Lizzie begins to show a disturbing fascination with the walkers and not nearly enough fear.
Her mind begins to break as she begins to think that it’s okay to kill her sister because she’ll just come back as a walker. She finally succeeds and kills Mika. Carol knows something has to be done and convinces Tyreese to take Judith away as she tells Lizzie to look at the flowers while she raises a gun to the back of her head. The episode echoes such classics as Of Mice And Men. A complete gut-punch of an episode that Carol felt for many seasons to come. Easily one of the best episodes of The Walking Dead.
We were introduced to Negan in the season finale of season 6, but here we finally get to see his brutality in full effect. He has no problem dispatching two of the survivors in the most graphic and horrific scenes we’ve seen on the show, and that’s saying something. This episode showed us how genuinely evil Negan could be. He would go on to become one of the most compelling characters on the show when he tried to redeem himself for his past actions.
This episode changed the show going forward. Interestingly, the cliffhanger ending of Season 6 had people demanding to know which character was killed, as we only got a point-of-view shot as someone died. A boycott was even called for, but the ratings for the show kept rising from this episode forward. It should be interesting to see how Negan has evolved on Dead City.
How can you not count the very first episode as probably the best of the series? It had the most compelling setup. A man wakes up in the hospital to find it abandoned and the world in a state of disaster. Rick soon learns that the dead have started to walk the Earth. He was shot on duty as the local Sheriff but has been in a coma for a month. Now he has to find out where his family ended up, and he navigates this new world.
We see Rick meet Morgan, who would return to the show later on, enter a deserted Atlanta, and then find the place swarming with the undead, so he has to take shelter in a tank. So many things set up the series in the first episode that it’s just great to watch how the show would come together. It set in motion what would become a TV juggernaut that is still ongoing today.
What do you think are the best Walking Dead episodes? Are you looking forward to Dead City? Let us know in the comments below.